Google Books has lots of old Baseball Digest issues available. It is interesting to see how previous generations thought. And, so often, it is fun to see how wrong they were. Take this headline from March, 1980.

Kiko Garcia had an okay career and was able to stick around baseball for parts of 10 seasons, but ultimately he ended his career with a middling .239 BA, .286 OBP and .323 SLG. He had a total of 12 career home runs.

Funnily enough, at the time this was published in Baseball Digest, there was a third baseman in Orioles camp who, just the year before had hit a respectable .286 between Miami and Charlotte. He was headed towards a breakout 1980 season, where he’d hit .276/.367/.492 and hit 25 home runs. The year after that, he was in Rochester. And the year after that, he was Rookie of the Year in Baltimore… as a shortstop. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He was Cal Ripken Jr.

Kiko Garcia, by the way, was sent to Houston in 1981 and never played in more than 100 games again.